Abby Jones - Foggy Valley Blog

CV

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:30:44 UTC

CV

Abby's Work On Display and for sale @ Central Iowa Artist Coop at Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines Iowa.

Central Iowa Artist Coop LLC,

Merle Hay Mall

3850 Merle Hay Rd,

Des Moines, IA 50310

______________________________________________________________________________

Abby's Work On Display and for sale @ Tally's in Des Moines

I currently have five pieces displayed and available for purchase at Tally's...

Tally's Restaurant, Bar & Catering
2712 Beaver Avenue
Des Moines, IA

515 279 2067 (restaurant/fax)

www.tallysbeaverdale.com www.ankenyartcenter.com
www.reedmag.orgThe exhibit ran from August 18-Oct 10.
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

Group Art Exhibition @ Ankeny Art Center

"Resident Artists: Diversify Your Bonds"

Solo Gallery Exhibition (April 4, 2009 -- July 24, 2009)

Paul Engle Center For Neighborhood Arts, 1600 4th Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids
For more information, call (319) 366-1836, or email Ron Adkins, curator, at rsa502@yahoo.com

Watch highlights from the opening at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n7P3QTFvmw

______________________________________________________________________________

Abby's work "Wavy Gravy" was recently published in Reed Magazine's 2009 paperback issue. Reed Magazine is a contemporary journal of poetry, prose, and art.

______________________________________________________________________________

Lecture on expressionism and primitivism given to the Sioux City Artist Group on May 12th, 2009 at the Sioux City Arts Center in Sioux City, Iowa
www.landfillart.org
______________________________________________________________________________

Other Projects:

Landfill Arts Project

The 1,041 pieces of rusted metal are actually old automobile hub caps from the 1930’s through the 1970’s. Each hub cap, after being cleaned and primed, is affectionately called a "metal canvas."

Disability Postcard Project
818 connecticut Avenue NW

Suite 600

Washington, DC 20006 USA

c/o VSA arts

Works By Iowa ArtistsI currently have four pieces displayed and available for purchase.

Solo Gallery Show in Cedar Rapids

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:31:37 UTC

Art Opening for Solo Gallery Exhibition

Expressions in Abstract
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n7P3QTFvmw

The exhibition will run from April 4th through July 24th 2009.

"The influence of such classic abstract expressionists like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock are evident in her work, but Abby Jones takes the form in her own direction. The result is art that is both interpretive and deeply personal, full of vibrant color." Ron Adkins, President of the board of directors and Curator of the Paul Engle Center for Arts.

Paul Engle Center for Arts
1600 4th Ave SE
Cedar Rapids, IA 52403
Email: rsa502@yahoo.com
Phone: 319-366-1836

Expressionism, Primitivism, Transcendental Meditation

Fri, 7 Aug 2009 23:35:58 UTC

Expressionism

In order to get any sort of coprehensive picture of the enormous range of stylesin the contemporary art scene, some system of classification is needed. So I call the style of art I create Expressionist, but this is still just a system of classification and any such system inevitably involves arbitrary pigeonholing and stereotyping which distorts and simplifies our understanding of the complexity of the artistic impulses. That being said, Expressionism is an emotionally motivated organization of artistic elements which provides a means for communicating the individual artist's subjective reality. In other words, the primary aim of expressionism is a visual statement of the artist's inner feelings. A tendency toward abstraction inherent in expressionism is a tendency which led to the term abstract-expressionism. After WWI (1918) the impulse to experiment, to discard the rules of dogma of the past, and to move into fresh modes of expression spread. Artists in the early twentieth century searched for inspiration. Some found inspiration in the art and culture of primitive peoples. There are as many form of inspiration as there are artists and there are as many forms of expressionist work as there are emotions in humanity. Considering my style of work I will continue to talk about expressionism from a primitivist basis for inspiration.

Primitivism is an artistic movement in particular that originated as a reaction to the Enlightenment. Rousseau was one of the first to draw attention to the "noble savage". What 18th century culture lacked, he argued, was nature, passion, emotion, instinct, and mysticism. Lao-Tzu wrote, "A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants." The Romantics developed the idea of primitivism further. They believed that modern society was moving away from its traditional roots, loosing touch with its "true" primitive condition. Out of this came Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, Byron and Wordsworth, and later Conrad and Picasso. Jacque Lipchitz, a Polish-American sculpture, found that the pirmitive art provided him with a pattern for achieving an expressionist intensity of feeling which is evident in his charcoal and wash piece, "Drawing for Sacrifice." Jacque Lipchitz Charcoal and wash, 25" x 19" San Francisco Museum of Art (Permanent Collection).

For me the best way to express my ideas about energy, emptiness, closeness to nature, and primitivism most closely remsembles the term abstract expressionism. I employ transcendental meditation to get in touch with nature, passion, emotion, instinct, and mysticism. To get in touch with that intuitive nature that Lao-Tzu wrote about.

Transcendental Meditation

Derived from the Vedic tradition, transcendental meditation is a meditation technique that Maharishi Mahesh yogi developed in 1955. He wrote in his book, "The Science of Being and Art of Living", that it is a mental procedure that allows the mind to quiet itself. The use of a single thought or mantra allows the individual's attention to be directed naturally from an active style of functioning to a less active or quieter mode of mental activity. According to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, as the mind quites down, the person meditating can become aware that thought itself is transcended, and can have the experience of what is called "the source of thought" or Transcendental Being. In the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's book, he writes that transcendental meditation and focusing the mind on experiencing it's deeper levels, over time, brings these deep levels of understanding from the subconscious to within the capacity of the conscious mind.

"The elements that compose the soul are brought out by art, the art of a musician or of a painter, which exteriorises in the colors of the spectrum the intimate composition of those worlds which we call individuals and which, without the aid of art, we should never know. A pair of wings, a different respiratory system, which enabled us to travel through space, would in no way help us, for if we visited Mars or Venus while keeping the same senses, they would clothe everything that we saw in the same aspect as the things of Earth. The only true voyage of discovery, the only really rejuvenating experience, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the universe that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we can do with a painter, with a musician; with men/women like these we do really fly from star to star." Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

Why I chose to participate in the Landfill Arts Project.

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:40:20 UTC

A series of quotes would best help illustrate my intentions!

"A good artist lets his intuition

lead him wherever it wants." Lao-Tzu Tao-Te-Ching

I felt that this was a positive endeavor for Mother Earth. Making a, potentially harmful to the environment, piece of waste into a work of art is a statement in and of itself...

"From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow." Aeschylus

Grass roots arts movements with powerful statements about the way our society ought to change are where real art is made... the cusp of the realm of emotional upheaval, when artists have something to say.

"Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind." Leonardo da Vinci

This project posed a challenge for me as an artist. Could I convert what I normally do on a very large canvas to a relatively small piece of curved, irregular shaped metal? The moment we stand still in anything we do is the moment when we cease to really live life. Trying new things and thinking outside the box are two of the greatest things an artist can do for his/her artistic process. So I had to go for it, and I had a great time overcoming the challenges of the "metal canvas".

And lastly, but certainly the most important:

"Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees." Proust

I participated in the Landfill Art Project because I am an artist and I must always create art and face all of its challenges so that I may emerge from myself and, through the creation of art, know nature.

Current Projects

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:08:24 UTC

Landfillart Project:

From Landfillart.org

Landfillart is an international effort encompassing one-thousand-forty-one (1,041) artists to claim a piece of rusted metal garbage and create fine art.
The 1,041 pieces of rusted metal are actually old automobile hub caps from the 1930’s through the 1970’s. Each hub cap, after being cleaned and primed, is affectionately called a “metal canvas.” Although most “metal canvases” have been transformed by the artist using oil or acrylic paint, some have been weaved on, glued or screwed or welded to, or made into fine sculpture.
I have found that the fine artists I have worked with on this project do not even flinch when looking at this white round disc of metal canvas. And why should they. Artists from the beginning of time have used cave walls (Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain,) walls of pyramids (Egyptians,) animal skins (American Indians,) etc… as their canvas. In addition, as a gallery owner for over thirty years, I maintain that artists, generally speaking, are more ecologically in touch and environmentally aware. Perhaps that is the reason forty-one artists readily accepted the challenge and embraced the project.
Although the project is in its infancy (I hope to have it completed by 2012,) it will evolve from a simple idea of taking forty-one old rusted hub caps and creating forty-one pieces of great art. The second phase has already started with the acquisition of one thousand additional (1000) rusted hub caps which will be turned into cleaned and primed “metal canvases. The project will continue with finding one thousand (1000) talented artists who believe in this project.
The third phase will involve publishing a book on the project showcasing all one thousand forty one (1,041) completed “metal canvases.”
The fourth and final phase will involve choosing 200 metal canvases that adequately represent the project and create a traveling show. The book and traveling show will publically portray the global art community's effort to positively impact the environment through repurposing previous metal waste into great landfillart.

__________________________________

I'm really excited about participating in this project. It's aims are noble and the approach is unique and interesting. I'm excited to see how my works will translate onto the hub cap. Check out their website and see a gallery of already completed works from artist's around the world. www.landfillart.org gallery

Perhaps you'll join me in participating in this global artist's statement.

Namaste,

Abby

Poetry

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 12:58:17 UTC

862

A gurgling bubbling hiss
detonates from his gullet-
coughing and pacing,
pacing and coughing.
His belly protrudes over his
debilitated gray/blue
hospital pants; the buttons
of his shirt straining-
number 862 stenciled
on his pocket.

Mumbling and gurgling,
gurgling and mumbling-
clicking back and forth
in his five by ten
concrete case; no
shoelaces for fear he may
ingeniously hang
300lbs. on a miniscule
thread from non-
existent light fixtures
(rather, smooth plates
of glass that glow
with a hideaous...

He roars for a deceased
loved one- pounding
on the locked door
to his own private
pandemonium.
give me a god damned
cigarette, he protests;
pounding and roaring,
roaring and pounding- his
mustache caked with last night's
dinner and a hole in the right
foot (big-ingrown-toe-nailed toe)
of his only pair of socks. Fuzzy
red hair hard
with gel or grease. Balding,
he undualates... silent now;

in a shadowed corner
of his cell, rocking and crying,
crying and rocking. I wonder,
what made him that way?

as I listen to his leaded tears
smack the green painted
cement floor reverberating down
my spinal cord looping back
up and welling in
the pin-pricked tear ducts
behind my closed lids.

I hear his shoes clicking...
clicking... in Machiavellian
time like my tiny gold
Quartz watch, I'm no longer
allowed to have. I stare
down at the generic
blue/gray hospital garb
eveloping me; the empty
holes in my shoes worn
to a silvery polish where
my shoelaces once were;
the number 333 stenciled
on my breast.

Suddenly I'm
crying or coughing
or pacing or pounding
or mumbling or gurgling
or rocking or roaring
i don't know which.
what made me the way i am?
as I rock silently back
and forth and back and forth;
tears streaming down my
flushed face.

I see it

when I really see,
glaring at me with frosty

hallowed

neon-indistrialized eyes
and I know
what made all of us the way we really are.

by: Abby Jones

________________________
Frame by Frame

On the dirt floor
children
huddle on heated grates
in the arctic crags
of the city's sky line.

An old woman's sagging
breasts covered
in tribal tattoo art
suspend
from her ancient bony chest
like drops of rain
that hang from that phat
1940's street lamp
on Court Avenue.

Sex sneaks
in to the 'til two club
on the black boots
of a pink prom dress
worn once and discarded
like a used condom.

How does a camera
man crop mad
enthusiasm with
a telephoto lens?

In the rear window
of a blue bus, marked
ALARM WILL SOUND,
teens find freedom
in confinement like
a restless itch
at the bottom
of a plaster cast.

They seem most alive
confronting death
at the intersection of
6th Ave. and Clive.

What would Hitchcock do?
Close up… then shove 'em
down the stairs.

In a local park,
peeled from a drunken
grin mixed with gin,
a faux fur coat flops
into a puddle of wet leaves.

How do you flee from the sound
of yourself, thick with espionage
like an old black and white
Hitchcock rerun?

by Abby Jones

________________________
A Sarchophagus of Sorts (a sestina)

A pahoehoe lava flow
feeds a hungry ocean. Molten rock
wells in a wide lava
lake. A dwarfed civil defense helicopter swallowed
by a curtain of fire
hurled high by a bleeding earth.

Pele's hair, strands of glass spun by Mother Earth's
weaving womb, flows
down the back of a topless mountain. Fire
rings the Pacific with tempestuous rock.
Architecture and trees frozen; swallowed
by turtle lumbering lava.

Destroyer and preserver, lava
a time capsule for Roman art. The earth
grasped a piece of history to her buxom. She swallowed
Pompeii with air fall ash and pyroclastic flow.
Pliny and his pine tree in 79 A.D. standing on a rock
overlooking his town; his father extinguished by fire.

Conspiring vapors fire
gobs of hot plastic lava
spinning in flight twisting into rock.
A cinder-sized clot of cooling earth
sinks like a half-dead fish in the thick ash flow.
An African fisherman cleaning his catch - casually swallowed.

Preserved in lava, a herd of clumsy elephants swallowed
by fire
that shook the dead volcano once. Flowing
red-eyed lava
wakes the veiled ashes. The earth
clears her clogged throat and submerses Surtsey rock.

Filled with glassy froth and bubbles it floats, the rock
swallowed
by Pele, goddess of earth
and fire.
She chases the god of water with lava
streams to the sea where he will forever ebb & flow.

The lurid glow of the flow
in the Sunda Straits between Java and Sumatra. Lava
creeps through the crevices; the sea embraces fire.

by Abby Jones

________________________
Radio City

The 1986
of a little ten-minute
jam on a mid-tempo
shuffle. He could make blues make

70,000 fans
leave a venue goose-bumped
and funeral silent.
He slept with his guitar,

a 58' Stratocaster
bought in 73' at
a New York pawn shop (it
might have been L.A.); memory

went pffft in the 70's,
but he could see "she is an A
minor... she is a B flat"
because everyone vibrates to

a chord that goes through a
progression especially
Stevie Ray Vaughan.

by Abby Jones

Some of Abby's Favorite Quotes

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 12:56:15 UTC

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Bob Marley

"All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man." Thoreau

"Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness." Allen Ginsberg

"Anything you've ever heard comes out in what you play. So, there's no way that it's actually your's. You just...you're just a sponge that sucks it up and you put out bits, that you don't even know how it gets there." Keith Richards

"A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation." Nietzsche

"Fortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh." Allen Ginsberg

"In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous." Aristotle

"Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth." Pablo Picasso

"Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem." John Lennon

"Poets are Damned... but See with the Eyes of Angels." Allen Ginsberg

"I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid." Thoreau

"I believe in a long, prolonged derangement of the senses to attain the unknown. Our pale reasoning hides the infinite from us." Jim Morrison

"Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous." Leonardo da Vinci

"Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason." Kant

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens." Hendrix

"This is the strangest life I've ever known." Jim Morrison

"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us." Proust

"Man is a universe within himself." Bob Marley

"The death of dogma is the birth of morality." Kant

"Every good painter paints what he is." Jackson Pollock

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." Nietzsche

"Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality." Salvador Dali

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." Thoreau

"Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth." Hemingway

"Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify." Thoreau

"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace." John Lennon

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." Einstein

"Stop thinking and end your problems." Lao-Tzu

"It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know." Thoreau

"Nature does nothing uselessly." Aristotle

"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads." Thoreau

"I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as much belongs to you." Walt Whitman

"I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs." Einstein

"Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful." Jimi Hendrix

"I don't do drugs. I am drugs." Salvador Dali

"The gods too are fond of a joke." Aristotle

"We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full." Proust

"Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." Kant

“Everything is beautiful if you want to experience it totally.” Charles Manson

"The modern artist... is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces." Jackson Pollock

"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life." Kant

"Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees." Proust

"I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude." Thoreau

“You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody's crazy.” Charles Manson

"Wisdom comes alone through suffering." Aeschylus

"The government is best which governs least" Democratic Republic

"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." Hemingway

"A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it." Proust

"From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow." Aeschylus

"God is a concept by which we measure our pain." John Lennon

"Whoever controls the media, controls the mind." Jim Morrison

"The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot." Salvador Dali

"When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing." Jackson Pollock

"Chaos is a friend of mine." Bob Dylan

"Every positive value has its price in negative terms... the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima." Pablo Picasso

"There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see." Leonardo da Vinci